Tech —

What should the long-awaited Mac Pro update look like?

We should see dual-socket Sandy Bridge Xeons and a redesigned case, at least.

Thunderbolt

It looks as though, with PC motherboard makers integrating Thunderbolt into their latest designs, Apple will finally add Thunderbolt to its pro-level workstation. The question is: how exactly will that work?

The complicating issue is that Thunderbolt not only carries high-speed PCIe data, but must also carry DisplayPort video as well. On all other Macs, GPUs—whether integrated or discrete—are fixed. This makes it easy to pipe the DisplayPort output to the Thunderbolt port, which serves as both a high-speed interconnect as well as the connection for an external monitor. The Mac Pro, on the other hand, has removable PCIe-based graphics cards. How will Apple get the output of these cards into the Thunderbolt controller?

The most likely solution is a Mini DisplayPort passthrough cable. ASUS is using an external DisplayPort cable to add Thunderbolt to its latest motherboard designs, but that seems decidedly "un-Apple-like." There may be a more elegant solution in the works, such as directing the card's output over the PCIe bus directly to the Thunderbolt controller, but according to our sources, no current graphics cards work that way. Given that reality, we think Apple will use an internal cable combined with GPUs featuring an internal mini-DP connector.

Intel's Thunderbolt demo included several drives hooked up to a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge and an unannounced AOC display.

Chris Foresman

Thunderbolt's PCIe-based design is perhaps most beneficial to mobile applications, since it allows notebooks access to hardware that otherwise would only come on a PCIe card. But even though the Mac Pro has PCIe slots inside, it doesn't make sense to simply leave the port off the Mac Pro. The types of high-end storage, video, audio, and other devices that are adopting Thunderbolt will likely be used by the same professionals that would opt for a Mac Pro on the desktop, even if they use a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air in the field.

While an internal cable isn't what we would call "elegant," it's a practical solution until Apple or Intel comes up with a better one.

USB 3.0

Intel's controller chips for Ivy Bridge finally add native support for USB 3.0. It's a no-brainer that Apple will adopt this standard across its systems, especially since it is fully backwards compatible with USB 2.0 devices. While USB 3.0 support isn't native on the controller chips for Xeon E5, we don't think Apple would skimp on upgrading the standard on its top-of-the-line professional workstations. Apple will have to add an additional controller, but we expect USB 3.0 support to be there.

FireWire 800 will also very likely continue to exist on the Mac Pro for the foreseeable future; there is no advantage to dropping native support for FireWire at this point in the game, especially as Thunderbolt is still in its infancy.

However, Intel's Xeon E5 chipsets do support the latest SATA 3.0 standard, giving internal drives a 6Gbps connection to the motherboard. Users can expect better drive performance overall, especially when using the latest SSDs.

Finally, there's support for PCIe 3.0. This latest update to the PCI Express standard removes some of the bottlenecks for certain high-bandwidth applications, including massive GPU computations and streaming tons of video or other data to RAID arrays.

Essentially, the Sandy Bridge-EP platform will bring lots of little boosts all around, which in aggregate should make for a snappier machine.

Optical drive

The Mac Pro has two optical drive bays, but in this age of the Mac App Store, iTunes, and Netflix, sticking shiny plastic and metal discs into a computer has become a rare occurrence for some users. An optical drive isn't even an option on the latest Mac mini (and never was on the MacBook Air).

Apple and its Mac Pro users might not be ready to ditch optical drive entirely, but we do suspect that a revised Mac Pro might only have one optical bay. Like the last generation Mac mini, however, we think Apple may offer an option to replace the optical drive with one or more HDD or SSD storage devices.

Storage

The current Mac Pro design has four 3.5" internal storage bays. We don't expect the number to go down, though it may be possible for it to go up. One potentially radical change that we think Apple might employ is making some, or all, of the internal bays 2.5". SSDs are increasingly common inside a Mac Pro, and these solid state drives are most commonly available in a 2.5" form factor. In addition, 2.5" HDDs are now widely available in 1TB or even 2TB capacities.

Moving to the smaller drive bay size would allow Apple to pack in more drives. Or, as we discuss below, the company could shave some serious volume from the hulking Mac Pro case. And while 3.5" drives come in larger capacities, the trade-off might be worth it for the majority of users.

Case design

Apple

One major thing that hasn't changed about the Mac Pro in nearly a decade is its external anodized aluminum "cheese grater" case design. First adopted by Apple for the PowerMac G5 in 2003, every one of Apple's high-end machines has been wrapped in perforated aluminum in the nine years since. While the longevity of the case design speaks to Apple's design prowess, now is as good a time as any for a serious change.

For one thing, the Mac Pro is huge—massive even—compared to Apple's other devices, which are typically the smallest in their respective class. The Mac Pro is meant to be a giant of computing power, but it doesn't have to be quite that big.

As we noted above, Apple could easily ditch at least one of the internal optical drive bays. The company could also switch some or all of the internal storage bays from 3.5" to 2.5". That alone could allow Apple to make the Mac Pro thinner and significantly shorter, even if it keeps the number of internal bays constant.

There are two other major complaints about the current case design. One is that the handles on top—a design cue carried over from the PowerMac G3 and PowerMac G4—is aesthetically pleasing but ergonomically poor.

"Those handles have been the definition of form over function since the very first PowerMac G5 case," explained Ars reader xoa. "They're very pretty and symmetric. [But] they also suck to actually use, unlike the old G4 cases. They have sharp edges, are too wide, aren't angled, so it's not fun hauling the beast around, particularly since those things are heavy."

The other complaint is that a Mac Pro is the only viable replacement for Apple's discontinued rack mountable Xserve. However, jamming a Mac Pro into a standard rack space is anything but elegant.

9to5Mac reported last year that Apple was "toying" with a redesigned case that would be able to fit into a 3U rack space. But MIC Gadget claimed late Wednesday that the design would not be any more amenable to racking as Apple "does not wish to be present in the enterprise market," according to its sources. Regardless of which market Apple does or does not want to be in, the truth is that a wide variety of professionals that use Mac Pros could benefit from a machine that is rack mountable. This includes video and audio pros, 3D designers, animators, and scientists using multiple Macs to crunch huge data sets. Given this, we still think a Mac Pro case that better fits into standard rack space is definitely plausible.

The mythical "xMac"?

While the Mac Pro has languished for nearly two years, many users have told us that they got tired of waiting and switched to iMacs. These users weren't looking for an all-in-one solution, however—it's just the only reasonably high-end desktop solution that Apple offers under $3,000.

We (and many of our readers) think there's a middle ground here for Apple to introduce a more compact tower solution using Ivy Bridge desktop chips—perhaps with the same, or fewer internal expansion options than the Mac Pro—with more adaptability and upgradability than the iMac. Denizens of our Open Forum have long called such a mythical machine the "xMac."

Apple could have offered such a product for years, but it hasn't. Perhaps it was a drive to keep its product line as simple as possible. Perhaps its sales and marketing executives know that it wouldn't sell in numbers enough to justify the development costs. But we do know there is a sizable market of 3D, video, and other high-end professionals who would like a more affordable Mac tower. According to designer and Ars contributor David Girard, those users are increasingly adopting Windows, mainly because something powerful enough is available at a price they can afford, without the expansion limits of an iMac.

Obviously Windows and Linux PC users can jump on each new processor as Intel releases it, but Mac users have to wait for Apple to update its lineup. The information we have is that Apple is planning to add something new and significant to the Mac Pro line that acknowledges the needs of professional Mac users. Whatever Apple announces, you can expect the crack Ars Technica liveblogging team to be on the scene at the WWDC keynote on Monday, June 11 to bring you full coverage. Stay tuned.